She held my gaze, her eyes glimmering.
“If everyone is in agreement then, I would like to get going before night falls,” Aquilino said. “Don Cristóbal, once Do?a Purificación’s death certificate arrives, I will collect all the paperwork and we can continue with the will’s proceedings. That will also give time to the other family members to decide if they want to purchase your share.”
“Excellent,” I said.
Everyone stood up to thank the lawyer, except for me. The whiskey gave me—albeit briefly—the courage to stay behind as Aquilino said his goodbyes. I’d been hoping I didn’t have to pose as a man any longer. I hated to be deceitful, but I saw no other way. In a week’s time, I would probably know who wanted me dead and I could reclaim my portion under my own name. Assuming, of course, that they didn’t manage to kill me first.
CHAPTER 6
Angélica
Three months earlier
Laurent squeezed my hand as Aquilino read a name that hadn’t been spoken aloud in this house for years: María Purificación de Lafont y Toledo.
My father’s Spanish daughter.
The legitimate one.
If it weren’t for her, I would’ve been my father’s favorite. Call me petty if you want, I don’t care, but if you had to live under the shadow of a ghost—a perfect ghost, at that—you would know what it was like to never be good enough, to get crumbs of attention, a smile here and there, a soft squeeze on the cheek as payment for practicing the harp three hours a day and playing like the angels. My good disposition went unnoticed; so did my efforts to manage the household with mathematical precision after my mother’s passing.
I straightened my back, listening to the long list of assets my father was leaving her. This only confirmed what I’d believed my entire life.
It wasn’t that my father was cruel. On the contrary, he spoiled me with gifts all my life. But that was all I received: things. The problem was that I wasn’t her, his firstborn; born in Europe to a Spanish mother. I wasn’t passionate about the land, about those damned cacao beans and chocolate like she was—even from afar. No, I was born in the New Continent; I was the daughter of a mestiza, his second not-so-legal wife and certainly not a full-blooded hidalga. It didn’t matter that I wore the latest fashion or how light my hair was (I washed it with manzanilla tea every other day to keep my blond streaks). It didn’t matter that I married a Frenchman, just to please my father, or that I’d memorized the name of every important wife in París Chiquito. It made no difference how meticulously I ran the kitchen, including my father’s favorite recipes every week: chateaubriand, quiche Florentine, cordon bleu, soufflé, and of course, fish on Fridays, like a good Catholic family. We never skipped the rice, either—a day without rice in this country was like not fixing a complete meal at all.
But none of this mattered.
My father had no time for me. Some days, when he was speaking to Martin, I would wonder if I’d turned invisible. I would start coughing, just to get his attention, but it was often Martin who patted my back without missing a beat in the conversation.
I couldn’t help but glance at Martin as Aquilino continued to read my father’s last wishes with that monotonous drone of his. We were all gathered in the dining room, surrounding my father’s lawyer, elbows resting on the surface of the table, mouths tightly shut. Martin pressed his hands together, his knuckles turning white. The will seemed to be having a similar effect on him as it did on me.
My father never tried to hide the fact that Martin was like the son he always wished Alberto had been. Martin was decisive, stern with the workers, and above all, he shared my father’s passion for the business. Alberto, on the other hand, had been barely audible before joining the seminary. He’d spoken in monosyllables and his days and nights were spent locked in his room with his architecture, theology, and philosophy books. On the rare occasions that we did see him (during meals) he seemed to be transported to another world, and if he spoke, it would be to question things we’d never thought about or had nothing to do with our current conversation. (“Do you think goodness is innate or learned?”)
Not my father. Not Martin. Their days and nights were scheduled around tree cycles. Those finicky trees were our fortune and our doom. If production was good in a given year, my father’s boisterous laughter would echo in every corner of the house, and he would lavish my mother, Catalina, and me with gifts.
God help us if production was bad.
In a bad year, my father would lock himself in his study for hours on end, in a perpetual state of fasting, and the only person allowed inside was Martin (with a bottle of red wine or jerez as an entry ticket). My father would write infinite letters that never got mailed and ended up collecting dust in his drawers, “La Marseillaise” blasting on his gramophone again and again until we were close to tearing our ears out. Every time the door opened (mostly to let Martin in and out), I would hear cursing (“Ce pays de merde!”).
But apparently, he hadn’t left Martin anything—an odd thing, considering how close they were and how patient Martin had been when my father was in one of his moods. Not even my mother—the saintliest of women—could stand his rotten temperament. She would invite the ladies from the Cofradía for an afternoon of prayer. (“Only the Virgin can help your father now,” she would explain.) But my father loathed them and the sights and sounds of these devout ladies never seemed to improve his temper. Quite the opposite.
Alberto covered his mouth and coughed, but his serene expression returned almost immediately. Either he didn’t fully grasp what Aquilino was saying or he didn’t care.